


Sand, Slow-Dancing, And Silent Observation

by constant_vellichor



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Carlos in the Desert Otherworld, Cecil is Mostly Human, Established Relationship, Fluff, Gen, Kissing, M/M, Minor Angst, One Shot, Slow Dancing, The Desert Otherworld, also dude i got no idea whether this already exists in canon or not but here it is, cecilos - Freeform, surprisingly this is not the weirdest perspective i've ever written from
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-11 23:19:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15326607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/constant_vellichor/pseuds/constant_vellichor
Summary: The desert is always watching. Benevolently. And it's always had a soft spot for a good love story, especially, it seems, between its favourite scientist and a man not-quite-human.





	Sand, Slow-Dancing, And Silent Observation

**Author's Note:**

> The first fic I post on this site and half of it was written in a heat-exhaustion-induced fugue state. Only quality fiction here, folks. Anyway, enjoy.

There is… someone _new_ in the desert today.

He could be called a man, as a man, indeed, is what he appears to be. He has a torso and arms and legs and a head and, physically and proportionally, he is average for a man in most ways. Granted, he does have skin like the inside of an eggshell- jarringly pale and just a little too membranous to be comfortable, and nictitating membranes drawn across all three of his eyes to protect from the grains of sand hurtling past on the wind, but these are not particularly interesting features, considering the kinds of humans the desert encounters on a regular basis.

And the desert _does_ encounter humans on a regular basis. There’s the wandering tribe of stumbling, thirsty citizens who had wandered in a while ago that it quite likes, especially that one woman with the fading hair dye and phone addiction. It had caught her in a loop by the mountain once, just to watch her her talk into the speaker and observe as the bright pink of her curls turned just a little more brown. She had been very polite.

But the point is, the desert knows humans, and this wandering someone with the reptilian eyes and eggshell complexion is _not_ one of them. Rather, he is something different. Something older- far older- comfortably residing in the body of a man.

(Distantly, the desert recalls the Mud Womb, and all the not-time it had spent there, huddled up to other things like itself- perhaps crouching closely with the very entity it finds itself encountering once again. But the desert cannot consciously bring these memories to the surface of its mind, and neither can the Voice of Night Vale, and so the memories will remain distantly submerged.)

It has no doubt that if inclined, this entity currently trekking across its dunes, leaving a prickly sensation on the desert’s form wherever his rhinestone-encrusted boots hit the sand, would make a formidable opponent in combat if either of them was so inclined. But though the desert’s curiosity was piqued, interdimensional combat was taxing- physically _and_ legally, the fines involved with any paradoxical collateral damage were _outrageous_ \- and it wasn’t really in the mood anyway. And, it observed with interest, battle seemed to be the last thing on the man’s mind.

He has been traipsing through the desert with a single-minded determination for a long time now (time had always been wonky in the desert, but it can tell when minutes are taking longer to pass than they need to, just to spite those experiencing them) not stopping to eat (the desert doesn’t think he needs to) and only resting when it seemed his legs would no longer support him and stubbornly collapsed under him, like petulant children in an exasperated adult’s grip. The desert notes that one of those times seems to be rapidly approaching as the man stumbles over a rock hidden under a thin coating of sand and almost falls. The desert watches for a little while longer, gazing as the man trudges shakily up another dune, the hem of his faded royal-purple robe dragging dustily behind him. He reaches the crest of the hill before dropping to his knees, gazing at the mountain looming in the distance, and the blinking red light atop it. There is nothing in his face but exhaustion as he drops his chin wearily to his neck and begins mumbling to himself.

His words are so quiet that the desert almost cannot hear him over the whistling of its own wind, even when it concentrates its consciousness into the patch of sand directly beneath the man’s knees. The desert pushes harder, forcing its mind into the tiny spaces in the grains of sand caught in the man’s stubby white-blond eyelashes, and that is where it clearly hears a word, spoken in a deep, rich baritone, a little hoarse from heat and sand and lack of use, but still lovely.

“ _Carlos_.”

And the desert knows that name.

~~~

Carlos is the desert’s fond exasperation. On one hand (it uses this term metaphorically; the desert hasn’t tried to manifest hands since an embarrassing incident in front of the Woman From Italy when the world was still a squalling newborn) he has barged into the desert’s perfectly neat and tidy dimension and had the audacity to begin trying to understand how it _worked_ , as if there was a _reason_ for why the desert does what it does. (There is, but that reason was born out of spite and malice and pain after the incident with the hands and the Woman From Italy, and it seems mortifying now that the desert thinks about it, and it would rather not have a _human scientist_ uncover it by humming over beakers and writing complicated equations on a whiteboard, thank you very much.)

On the other hand, the arrival and subsequent scientific investigations of Carlos were also the most interesting things to happen to the desert in a long, long time. The experiments he had performed had just been sort of, well, fascinating. _And_ he had helped the masked army build a civilisation, something the desert had been trying to whisper into their minds for a while now.

(There hadn’t been a civilisation in the desert since it had not been called the desert, but the empire. But that is a long, old story, filled with blood and a love that would not be lost, not for anything, until one day it was. That story is not this story, and you should not think about that story again.)

The desert knows Carlos. And, apparently, Carlos knows the man-shaped entity who had gone to so much trouble to cross its dunes. And it has been so very long since the desert saw a good love story play out. Not since Doug and Alicia, and that had been _eons_ ago. Maybe literally.

~~~

The desert’s power is limited, these days. It has no jurisdiction outside its own realm, and only a little influence inside it. Mostly it just watches, nestled in the warm sand or riding a wind current, and lets what inhabitants remain of its once-mighty dimension go about their short existences. It still has enough power, though, to shuffle a few dunes closer together, and to whisper thoughts into the ears of beings quietly and subtly enough that they think their ideas are their own.

The desert has enough rule over its own land to manifest as a miniature swirling sandstorm inside an Erlenmeyer flask and murmur to a beautiful scientist absorbed in his work that he should take a break, go for a walk, even just past the empty ice-cream parlour and over the closest dune, and that he might even find something scientifically interesting.

And, maybe, to brush his hair.

It has enough control over it own constantly shifting, roiling form to carry a man who is not quite a man imperceptibly over thousands of miles of burning golden sand towards a settlement he would have wandered towards forever and never reached. Enough power to tell the man to blink away the sand and tears from his eyes, pull his tattered hood back up, and keep toiling onwards towards his goal.

(Privately, the desert thinks that the man doesn’t need much convincing. He hasn’t seen that kind of determination since Alicia started training their Pomeranian to roll over.)

The desert has enough control over its domain to do these things, debilitating though they may be. So when Carlos crests one hill, fully intending to stay a few minutes, clear his head, and then go back to his makeshift lab, and the man simultaneously crests the dune adjacent to it, robe fluttering in the wind, weary and dry-mouthed but single-minded in his goal, the desert’s consciousness is nearby, doing the closest thing to lying half-dead on the sand as an non-physical ancient god can perform.

The desert watches it all play out. It’s too drained to move, and anyway, it wants to see this. (The desert doesn’t really have a concept of ‘creepy’, per se.)

And so the desert is there, with what would be a satisfied expression if it had a face to make it with, as the two man stare at each other from the tops of their respective dunes. Then Carlos breaks into a run, and the other man follows a split second after, skidding and scrabbling down the slope. His shredded robe catches on a loose rhinestone on his boot, and he goes tumbling head over heels into the sand at the bottom of the hill, sputtering through the sand in his mouth and blushing a violent, undefinable colour.

In the end that doesn’t matter, though, when Carlos reaches him and throws his arms around him in a flailing, flying tackle, burying his face in the man’s neck and fisting his hands in the back of his robes tight enough that his knuckles turn white. The man falls back, back sinking into the sand dune, one hand coming to rest on Carlos’s waist and the other coming up to stroke his long, tangled hair almost absentmindedly, like muscle memory fading but still deeply ingrained somewhere in a crowded mind. The man’s face is so shocked and wondrous and embarrassed and terrified and so blindingly _happy_ , all at the same time, that the desert nearly has to look away, without knowing why it feels that way.

“I missed you.” says Carlos, oaky voice muffled by tears and a faceful of faded purple robe.  
“You’re self-reliant, though,” says the man, in that healing baritone of his.  
“That’s the first thing a scientist is. You told me that years ago.”  
“That doesn’t mean I _want_ to be.”  
And here Carlos lifts his head, and stares up at the man with such love and joy in his eyes that the desert can hear his heartbeat skip.  
“And this scientist missed you, Cecil.”

 _Cecil_ , the desert thinks, _that_ is the man’s name, and it is still contemplating this as the man in question flips Carlos over and kisses him breathlessly into the soft sand.

~~~

Later, when velvety night has fallen over the desert and it has regained enough strength to move again, it catches and harnesses the wind to fly to the masked army’s settlement, where it can hear the sound of grating laughter, and music made from instruments with dried guts for strings. Slipping from mind to mind through the masked warriors, the desert catches sight of two shadows coiling around each other, and brighter, softer voices than those of the army. It listens, follows, and in a quieter corner of the party finds Cecil and Carlos.

They’re wrapped in each other’s arms, foreheads pressed together, swaying in a slow-dance to the strains of music drifting their way. Shadows catch in their hair and on the planes of their faces, before drifting off into the cooling air along with the smoke from the campfires. Fairy lights made from twine, broken green bottles and blips of unspeakable magic are hang overhead, drifting lazily.

The desert watches, as it’s done for ten thousand years, and ten thousand before that. And somewhere, off in the ether (or possibly in the past, future, or some parallel universe where it does, indeed, have a face), it smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Please, god, if this fic was any good to you at all, comment and kudo. I need validation from strangers on the internet else I shall perish. Also, come scream at me on Tumblr at https://constant-vellichor.tumblr.com/


End file.
